'They should have just laid the hell off'

Friday

Aug 30, 2013 at 12:01 AMSep 3, 2013 at 12:59 PM

Dressed in an inmate uniform, Rockne Newell sat in a wheelchair with shrapnel still in his right leg as a corrections officer pushed him up to the other side of one of the Monroe County Correctional Facility visitor's windows.

ANDREW SCOTT

Dressed in an inmate uniform, Rockne Newell sat in a wheelchair with shrapnel still in his right leg as a corrections officer pushed him up to the other side of one of the Monroe County Correctional Facility visitor's windows.

Newell's hair, which he had worn down past his shoulders in the outside world, had been cut to less than an inch high on his head, though he still had a mustache and beard.

His eyes were now bare of the shades he customarily wore prior to incarceration.

His hands, which police charge held the weapons that took three lives at the Aug. 5 Ross Township supervisors' meeting, were cuffed in front of him. Those hands reached upward to his left and picked up the phone on his side of the visitor's window.

"I'm sorry innocent people got hurt, though I know 'sorry' doesn't fix anything," he said, exuding more anger than remorse.

During a profanity-laced, 30-minute interview Wednesday, Newell railed against township officials, making an array of accusations against them.

Killed in the attack were Chestnuthill Supervisor Dave Fleetwood, 62, along with township residents Jerry Kozic, 53, and James "Vinny" LaGuardia, 64. Two others, including Kozic's wife, were injured.

Bernie Kozen and Mark Kresh, who were at the meeting, tackled and subdued Newell, keeping him from shooting more people. Newell was shot with his own gun, causing the bullet to hit coins in his pocket and send shrapnel from those coins into his leg.

Asked if he plans to go to trial, plead guilty or plead no contest, Newell chose not to comment without first speaking to an attorney.

"Yeah, unfortunately there were innocent victims, but I was an innocent victim myself 23 years ago," he said. "That's what started all this."

State police believe Newell went to the township meeting on a suicide mission, intending to kill the supervisors and solicitor he felt were responsible for taking his home from him.

Newell bought his property on wooded Flyte Road in 1990, prior to being laid off from his welding job and then getting into a crash that landed him on disability, and facing years of what he calls harassment from the township afterward.

Saying he collected items others call "junk," Newell felt hounded by neighbors viewing his property as an eyesore and the township citing the property for various code violations.

Armed with court orders, the township last year finally managed to get Newell evicted from the property, prior to taking ownership of it through a July sheriff's sale.

The township cited Newell for failing to pay thousands of dollars in fines as grounds for the sale, though Newell said no one ever told him he had to pay anything.

"Had I known when I bought that property that I was going to be persecuted and there wasn't going to be any justice for me in the end, I wouldn't have bought it," Newell said in a voice gradually rising to a shout.

"Mine wasn't the only property on that road with so-called 'junk' when I bought it," he said, adding that neighbors cleaned up their properties when residential developments began springing up not far from Flyte Road.

Describing himself as a proud descendant of a family he said has been in the Poconos since fighting for independence in the American Revolution, Newell said he had the right of any other American to be left alone to live on his property and keep it as he saw fit.

"I wasn't bothering anybody," he said, using profanity to the point where a corrections officer tapped him on the shoulder and told him to watch his language.

"Whatever you heard about people trying to help me (clean up and get the property code-compliant) is all lies," he said. "They should have just laid the hell off. That property was all I had."

Newell said that, prior to the sheriff's sale, he was planning to sell the property once he had addressed what the township called a stream obstruction caused by a culvert driveway he had to install.

"I would have taken at least $50,000 for it and then I would've been gone, because I was just tired of all the bull—— at that point," he said. "But they just wouldn't let me alone. And now, here we are."